No, no, no... Not this feeling... Not again... Kyla felt absolutely terrible. Coming to school without makeup on was a HUGE mistake! People were giving her those looks again, the ones the old her had hated so much, the ones of mingled pity and disgust that may as well have told her out loud she was ugly. Many of them were confused or plainly shocked to see the school's queen bee like that, so of course, everybody was taking notice! It was like she could feel the social status painfully ripping its bloody self out of her chest! And I should've known, dammit! Sarah absolutely was not free from insecurities of her own if she could've been so warily jealous of Kyla before; Kyla had felt them herself when she saw how good the new Sarah was making herself look. Yet back when she was up on cloud nine with Biff, getting high on Sarah's bravado and drunk on her beauty, somehow she'd let the idea slip into her head that she was invincible, and hence absolutely could get away with craziness like sex with Biff or heading to school without Sarah's makeup/hair/fashion skills, but dear lord was that ever wrong! Kyla had never felt more like her old self, in the worst way possible, than when she walked into the school building that morning.
And it's all the fault of that snaky manipulative bitch! Kyla thought with vitriol much more suited to the new her than the old. She couldn't believe Sarah had just stood her up that morning! She'd waited and waited for Sarah to show up, almost to the beginning of school, and texted and texted her to ask where she was or what the holdup was, and got nothing back but a weird text from Melissa saying to go on without her or Sarah. As much as she hated it, Kyla felt like that was what she was forced to do; she wasn't in the habit of flagrantly skipping classes like Melissa or Sarah, even though the new her apparently had a rewritten history of doing just that.
But what really, really pissed her off first period, and fanned her jealous rage to outright off-the-leash fury, was what she saw on her phone, buzzing as it did through much of early first period. Melissa, being the hopeless gossip she was, had broken the story that Sarah had somehow become a goddess of fashion overnight almost as soon as learned it, and made herself busy flooding the cheerleader's group chat with selfies, pics of Sarah working on Zach, and rapid-fire text messages explaining everything she knew or answering the other cheerleaders' questions (these mostly consisting of such things as WTF HOW?). Kyla could've thrown her phone if she wasn't worried about about the bedazzled pink case's integrity. THAT'S what held her up!? She might've screamed. I'm back to being ugly old me because she flouted our deal for one of Zach's stupid jokes!? Well, if she thinks she can get away with that, she's gravely mistaken! Kyla made up some excuse about needing to get to the bathroom and floored it to Sarah's house. I'll show her! I'll sting her back so hard she won't even come to school today! Kyla didn't really have a plan and wasn't really thinking about what she was doing, but she knew she could make Sarah cry after the other night, and that was enough for her.
"C'mon, last one, I swear, then we can go!" Melissa held the phone out in front of her and lined up beside Sarah, who in turn stood at Zach's side. Both Sarah and Melissa froze into picture perfect, "pretty girl" poses smiling up at their image on the camera, but Zach, now, he waited until just before Melissa clicked, then threw out his best impression of an ahegao face. The expression turned out a bit blurry and not really all that good, but it was enough to make Sarah turn a deeper shade of red and Melissa shake her head and facepalm upon reviewing the pic.
"Ohmigawd, you are the most bizarre freak of nature that I've ever met, you know that?" Melissa said to Zach while saving the photo. "You're sure you're really from this planet?"
"Pretty sure. I'm dressed like it, aren't I?" Zach gave the dress a light twist to show it off, just hinting at the hairy man-legs that existed above the stockings. ""Take us to your leaders, Earthlings!' They'll say, and out will be brought you, Sarah, and I, the prettiest little princesses in the halls of VLHS!"
"Tch," Melissa waved him off dismissively and went off to type up a caption for the cheerleader's group chat, but Zach didn't miss the briefest flash of a grin appearing on her face before she did.
"I-it isn't really that good..." Sarah squeaked, having bashfully backed off from Melissa and Zach herself. "Not by the popular girls' standards..."
"Oh, sure it is, Sarah! I'm a guy, you know, and I'd bang me if I had different equipment underneath!"
Sarah went even redder in the face and backed off, and Melissa piped up "Yeah, like, how many pervs did you say lived on your home planet?"
"There's more of them than sticks in the mud like you and your friends. It's great there, actually!" was Zach's swift comeback before returning his attention to Sarah, and returning a bit of seriousness to his unfittingly masculine voice. "Don't tell me you're still getting cold feet over this whole thing, even at this stage? I'm being serious, Sarah, you look amazing and so do I!"
"I'm sure we do, but I can't help myself," Sarah said with a frustrated sigh. "Nothing I do can get it to stop. I, just... I know in my head everything I'm doing should turn out alright, but some other part of me just refuses to believe it. It's tiring to have to fight it all the damn time... I don't know how long I'll last..."
"You're just being too hard on yourself," Zach replied warmly. He didn't really know what Sarah was talking about, but she looked like she really needed the kind words anyway. "Besides, nobody said you had to do this thing alone! You and me, we're gonna walk in together and we're just gonna own that school together, right!?" Zach took Sarah's hand, curled it into a fist, and raised it.
"Right..." Sarah said quietly.
"C'mon, girl, you know we've got nothing to fear, right!?" Zach said enthusiastically, raising her arm a bit higher.
"Right," Sarah said a bit louder.
"We're gonna blow all the other girls away when they see us, right!?"
"Right!"
"No fear!"
"No fear!"
"You ready!?"
"I'm ready!"
"Then let's go take that school by storm!" Zach said, raising Sarah's arm over her head and breaking to go.
"RIGHT! Thanks, Zach!" The abyss looks away faster when more people are staring at it, after all~! Sarah thought with a new surge of confidence. She'd always thought cerebrally she could, but she was finally starting to really feel like she could do it, get back to her old self again just by her own sheer force of will!
"You guys are still such dorks," Melissa chuckled. She was done texting for the moment and just held the phone in a dangling hand, using the other hand to open some doors so that the party could leave. "But he is right insofar as you don't have to keep so many secrets anymore! Once we find her, I'll help convince Kyla she's lost the bet, and then you and her can tell me just what it is you're hiding fr-... KYLA, ohmigawd!"
In walking out of Sarah's front door, Melissa had almost bumped straight into Kyla, who was just then walking up to knock on said door. Melissa was taken aback, and not just by the surprise of it; Kyla didn't have any makeup on, and more than that, she seemed absolutely livid. "Yeah, outta my way. I need to see Sarah," she said, pushing past Melissa and walking into the house, swiftly finding her target.
"You! What the hell, Sarah, I was counting on you this morning!?" Kyla said, pigeonholing Sarah almost immediately.
"O-Oh... yeah..." Instinctively, Sarah took a step back and away from Kyla. "I, uh..." Sarah stumbled on her words, trying to find something that would sound right. "... I got c-carried away... here..."
"Yeah, I can see that, 4 eyes!" Kyla barked at her, taking a step closer in on Sarah. "And I don't give a damn! We had a deal, you flake, you were supposed to do MY makeup, not some crossdressing freak's!"
"ShewassupposedtodoWHAT!?" Kyla turned to see Melissa, not looking at her, but looking at her phone, which she had swiftly set to start recording what she sensed was gossip she would definitely need concrete evidence of. "Sarah'sbeendoingyourmakeup!? Whendidthathappen!?"
There was a moment of shock, where the magnitude of Kyla's mistake broke all over her face, but that shortly turned into something just making her even angrier. "Melissa, put that thing away!" she snapped at her. "And delete that video! This here is between Sarah and I, understand!? And that goes for you, too, wipe that idiotic grin off your face and get out!" She continued, turning to Zach as she did. His face had been one of shock at first, but slowly a grin had started to grow as things proceeded, and now he was stifling a chuckle.
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, it's just, heheheh! That's a funny image, that is! You, of all people, coming to Sarah, of all people, for a makeover!" Zach made no motion to leave, just processing it and laughing a bit harder as he did. It did not seem nearly as funny to Kyla as it had in the bathrooms back then. "And it fits too well, doesn't it, Melissa?" Melissa, still in shock at the revelation, had not stopped recording and just watched through the phone camera, enthralled.
"I said, shut the hell up, and get the hell out!" Kyla just about screamed at him, face now having crossed over redness and into the purple hues. "I'm not an idiot, you clowny fucking dumbass, I can do my own makeup just fine!"
"No..." Sarah almost whispered. "She can't."
Kyla then whipped around and slapped Sarah across the face with as much strength as she had in her, knocking Sarah clear to the ground.
That one wiped the smirk off Zach's face, and he jumped between Kyla and Sarah almost immediately. "Hey, NO! That's crossing a line, Kyla! You don't get to come here, to Sarah's own house, and slap her around making demands in it! Now I'm telling you to back off, unless you want more problems with me!"
"Oh yeah!?" Somehow, a tear had begun to roll down one of Kyla's cheeks, but she showed no sign of slowing down to back off or cry. "You and what army, shemale!? I'm supposed to be queen at this school! Me! Do you wanna pick that fight!?"
"Okay, Kyla, now you're just being stupid!" Zach countered fearlessly. "Even throwing these hands aside, you are on tape, breaking and entering into another person's home to commit physical assault, in the presence of someone who too has a phone that can call the police! Do you wanna pick that fight, 'clowny fucking dumbass'!?"
Kyla was crying openly now, but she still would not back away and take a moment to herself. She had no answer, so she just stared Zach's feminine face down, never once letting her reddening, watery eyes stray. In that silence, it was Melissa who finally spoke up first, saying, "Kyla, I don't know what's happening, but as your friend-..."
"Stay, out of this, Melissa!" Kyla snapped at her before she could finish. "And turn that motherfucking thing off already!"
"That could easily be construed as obstruction of justice, now," Zach pointed out immediately and authoritatively. "Keep it on until your toxic friend here has left the building, and don't even think of deleting it afterward."
"She... doesn't have to leave..." Sarah said, suddenly and quietly. By then, she was sitting up, rubbing her a cheek much redder than the other, and staring a thousand yards into the space in front of her, not at the group. Everyone, all at once, turned to look at her. "Let's all calm down... turn off the camera... and just talk. I owe that to Kyla, anyway."
There was then a few seconds of silence that lasted many hours. Melissa finally, hesitantly, stopped the video and put her phone away. Kyla finally pulled herself together and sat down, tired suddenly, to dry her face. Zach mostly asked after Sarah as she got up. "Are you sure you're okay? Kyla slapped you pretty hard..."
"Kyla has no idea what she's doing," Sarah explained sympathetically. "She has no idea how to handle being me. I can see it. Everything's so bright and vivid, she's getting herself carried away, every which direction, not a thought given to where it takes her, barely a thought about how to fight it... She never would have come here, or slapped me, or anything, if she'd just taken a moment to think, like her old self would've. I'm sure of it."
Kyla curled up and looked away remorsefully. Both Zach and Melissa were staring, uncomprehending, at Sarah, the former obviously not having the slightest clue what Sarah was saying, but the latter apparently getting closer to the truth. She asked "'Like her old self...'? Sarah, what happened to you two? Where's all this coming from?"
"That's the big secret," Sarah said. "Whoever lost the bet had to figure out how to explain it to people. And Kyla... I think you lost. Would you mind...?"
Kyla did mind. She was an emotional wreck, and only just holding together her composure. It was only a very long moment later, with some prodding from Melissa, that Kyla finally started explaining what she knew.
"We switched lives," she told them. "I have no idea how it happened, or why... we were just in the bathroom, that night, and suddenly I had Sarah's life, and she had mine. She's the real head cheerleader here... the real queen bee... and your real best friend, Melissa. The one who never would have done anything as stupid as what I just did!" Kyla's voice cracked, so she buried her face in her knees and would say no more, for a long moment.
"You're just trying to play at chess before you've learned how the pieces move, that's all. Don't beat yourself up too much!" Sarah tried as consolation. Giving Kyla a moment, she continued the explanation for her. "We got the other's personality, too, but it looks like our knowledge and experiences have stayed. That's how I know so much about makeup, and she doesn't. How I knew lying to you never ends well, Melissa, and she didn't. We're both trying to figure out what to do with the other's life."
Melissa's eyes were shimmering scanners. She wasn't disbelieving it, but her curiosity wasn't slaked yet. "And I'm guessing that's why you made the bet then? You wanted to get back to your old lives, so you made the deal as motivation?"
"Yeah. Well... kinda. Kyla didn't believe I'd actually be able to... y'know, achieve anything with her old status, and thought it'd be funny to see what I'd do, so she proposed the bet on a whim. I've definitely been using it as motivation, though, as I'm sure you know given that you probably snuck around my room while I was busy with Zach."
Melissa's cheeks flushed in embarrassment, and her wonderstruck stare at Sarah only intensified. She really does know me inside out! Melissa thought.
"Wait," Kyla looked up from where she sat. "What's in your room?"
"I-I, uh... tore down everything that reminded me I was supposed to be you," Sarah said with some embarrassment. "I've been gunning for my old spot much harder than you know."
That glare. Again. Sarah sighed; she knew exactly what it meant. It wasn't mere jealousy anymore; it wasn't merely anticipation of a potential threat; Kyla must have really, really hated her by now, and Sarah was going to have to just deal with that. That didn't scare her nearly so much as it did anymore, though. Sarah was winning, and they all knew it.
Another few seconds went by, filled with a day's worth of silence. After a time, the one to break it was Zach, and of course he couldn't resist doing so with a joke. "Well, my mind's officially in knots, and this somehow while missing out on Trigonometry today. This has all been a fantastic adventure I'm sure our teachers wouldn't care to hear a word of, so let's not keep them on the edge of their seats, right?" He said, motioning the group to leave.
"I still don't have any makeup on..." Kyla muttered.
"I'll give you a quick once-over, nothing fancy, then we'll go. You two can go ahead of us," Sarah said, reaching for her instruments of fashion once again. "Oh, and Melissa? I won't tell you to keep what happened here a secret outright, I know it'd kill ya, but... be discretionary, alright?"
With a funny look, Melissa nodded. That sounded way too much like something Kyla would've said, and she had to remind herself that Sarah was the new Kyla, from her perspective, in a weird way. Zach hung back a moment, too. 'You sure you're okay, hanging back here with her, after everything that just happened?" He asked Sarah concernedly.
Sarah just shook a fist in reply. "No fear, right?" she asked.
Zach blinked, and gave a slow nod. "You've got bigger balls than I do, girl." Then, hesitantly, he turned and left with Melissa.
